Patriotism in the Thought of Swiss Novelist Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854)

FAIN: FT-60199-12

Peter Meilaender
Houghton College (Houghton, NY 14744-8732)

Though one of the most significant Swiss authors of the 19th century, Jeremias Gotthelf is today virtually unknown to English readers. A pastor in the Swiss Emmental, near Bern, Gotthelf was a close observer of the changes occuring among the peasant villages surrounding him in the wake of both the Industrial Revolution and also the political unrest that swept Europe during the first half of the 1800s. Gotthelf's work contains significant social and political commentary, and it remains of interest to us today as contemporary communities again seek to respond to economic and political displacement caused now not by industrialization, but rather by globalization. In this project I propose to extend ongoing research into Gotthelf's social and political thought by focusing specifically on his treatment of patriotism. I shall do so in combination with translation work on his novella Der Knabe des Tell, a re-telling of the Swiss patriotic legend of William Tell.